Cold Fury (29 page)

I said nothing, trying to assume a poker face.

Elzy grinned and said, “Yeah, you have it, just as I suspected. You know something, you might not believe this, but I always liked you. You were a sweet kid and a straight arrow . . . just as bad a liar then as you are now. But you were also a tough little kid, and now you’re a tough young woman, and I say let’s let bygones be bygones. I say let’s do this thing together.”

“What thing?” I said calmly, stifling an urge to punch her teeth down her throat.

“Take over Chicago. It’s our time. Have you read the notebook?”

She knew I had it; it was too late to act as if I didn’t. “Parts of it.”

“I’m curious,” she said. “How much of it explains women’s roles in the Outfit? How much of it talks about your great-grandmother, grandmother, or mother? Where does it discuss the wives, sisters, and daughters of all of those Outfit bosses and thugs?”

“Nowhere,” I said.

“Exactly. Organized crime is a boys’ club, with no position of power or responsibility for a female.” She narrowed her eyes and said, “We’re all God’s children, except a woman connected to the Outfit. Then she’s less than a second-class citizen. She can be a faithful wife who won’t testify, or a
goomah
on the side, or an Italian mama who cooks meatballs for her sonny boy as he shines his pistol, but nothing else. That’s precisely why I faked my own death. With Poor Kevin back at my side, I was done being little miss Elzy-Do-This-Do-That. With my organizational skills, nerves of steel, and almost complete lack of moral conscience, it was time to be the Elzy I was born to be . . . the head of the Outfit.” She sipped her drink and said, “Unfortunately, I was born a female. If I’d openly infringed on Outfit business, the boys’ club would’ve crushed me. My head would be fish food in Lake Michigan and the rest of me scattered in the Sanitary Canal. If I was going to take over, I needed to disappear . . . to remove the thought of Elzy Zanzara from anyone even remotely connected to the Outfit, so that I could take it by complete and utter surprise. My work would have to be done covertly and unseen, working in the shadows until I made my move. And for that, I needed an edge.”

“You mean the notebook,” I said.

She stared at the ice in her glass and nodded. “With the information contained between those covers, plus my vision and your gift, we can rule this dirty town. It’s high time that someone who thinks with her brain first is in charge.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head slowly. “Never. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman. The whole thing has been rotten from the beginning and it will never change.”

“I don’t want to change it, you little fool,” she said. “I want to control it. But okay, fine and dandy, I’ll do it alone . . . well, not quite alone. I have Poor Kevin. He’s my ultimate weapon because he loves me and only me, and would happily travel to hell and back at my command. He almost got you the first time, in the basement of your house, if it hadn’t been for that filthy little dog.”

“The basement,” I said, feeling again at my neck. “He almost killed me.”

“He was just trying to squeeze the notebook out of you,” she said, sipping. “I suppose it was a bit painful, but Poor Kevin despises you Rispolis. But then, don’t we all?” And then she lowered her voice and glanced around at her people. “Of course, I never told my officers about Poor Kevin. Better to have them all working independently. That’s good leadership, Outfit style. Never let your employees know exactly what you’re doing, or whom you’re doing it with. Secrecy is the key to success.”

“You mean secrecy plus a masked lunatic, don’t you?”

“Tsk-tsk, sticks and stones,” she said, crinkling her nose. “Poor Kevin is my avenging angel. Nothing short of a Mack truck can stop him.”

“I guess I’ll have to get a Mack truck.”

Elzy finished her drink, patted her lips, and said, “This has been fun, but I want that notebook and I want it now.”

“I’ll never give it to you. Why should I? You don’t have my family.”

“Oh, but I have something,” she said, tossing a pair of books on the table. I glanced at the titles, Roger Ebert’s
The Great Movies
, volumes one and two, and recognized Doug’s well-worn copies. “Your chunky friend traced Poor Kevin’s devil mask to a novelty store, asked a few questions, and actually tried to catch him,” she said with a small smile. “It didn’t work out too well.”

“Where is he?” I said quietly, using every ounce of restraint not to flip the table and stomp the answer out of her. “I swear to God, if you’ve hurt him . . .”

“Don’t swear, and yes, of course we’ve hurt him. All you have to do is trade the notebook for your bloated buddy and Poor Kevin will let him go,” she said, narrowing her eyes behind the cat’s-eye glasses. “Of course, now that you’re here, I could just keep you, couldn’t I? Let Poor Kevin convince you to give up the notebook in his own special way. I have more than enough people here to . . .” But she spread her arms at an empty bar. Her officers were all gone, with cigarettes still smoldering and drinks unfinished, as if ripped from their posts by silent, unseen hands.

That’s when one of those hands lit on my shoulder.

Elzy looked behind me and her jaw muscles rippled.

One of Knuckles’s dark and anonymous guys said, “Time to go, girly.”

I rose and saw his two companions, one near the bar, one at the door, and wanted to ask what they had done with Elzy’s people, but it wasn’t a Q&A moment. Elzy crossed her arms and said, “I see you’ve learned a couple of things from the notebook.”

“More than a couple.”

“Two hours. Come alone, unarmed, or you’ll have a fat corpse on your hands.”

“Where?”

“Rispoli & Sons Fancy Pastries.” She smiled coyly.

The bakery, where her brother lost his face.

Club Molasses, where my family buried its secrets.

Where everything began and where, I realized, she intended everything to end.

• • •

An hour and fifty-eight minutes is not much time to speed-read part of a chapter, scribble a list, grab cash from a steel briefcase, drive like a maniac to one store and then another store, and then build a bomb.

Actually, the notebook calls it an “incendiary device.”

Chapter six (
Metodi–
Methods) describes it as ideal for “scare tactics, arson, and safe-cracking.”

It also cautions that it could kill someone, which might be a good thing.

After I aged the brand-new leather notebook I’d purchased by backing over it with the Lincoln and beating it with a hammer, I very carefully wired it with the device. Everything I needed to assemble the little bomb was available at the corner hardware store, which in my former life would’ve been extremely disturbing. My present life was a different story—one that could end prematurely at any time—and I had no moral issue whatsoever about blowing off the rest of that evil sock puppet’s face.

At the hour-fifty-nine mark I pulled up in front of the bakery.

The time for parking down the block had passed.

Leaping roof to roof seemed suddenly ridiculous.

I lifted the notebook, climbed out of the car, and walked through the front door of the bakery, the bell jingling behind me. I’d thought about bringing the .45, but it was bulky and hard to hide, and besides, if my scheme went off as planned I wouldn’t need it. The front of the store was dark and so was the kitchen, but it didn’t matter, I knew where they were, and went straight to the Vulcan. I folded myself inside, whooshed quickly below the earth, and pulled open the heavy steel door of Club Molasses.

It was dark inside except for a single spotlight.

It shone on Doug in the middle of the dance floor.

He was slumped in a chair, chin on his chest, shirt soaked with blood.

I ran to him, set the notebook on the floor, and gently lifted his head. It was impossible not to grimace at his beaten, swollen face. I whispered, “Doug. It’s me, Sara Jane,” and he blinked heavily, trying to focus. Quietly, I said, “Where is he?”

Doug worked his jaws, spit out a tooth, and said, “Right behind you.”

There was no panic, only action, and I spun with my right fist curled at my chin and my left fist in front of my right. Poor Kevin bowed like a huge, rumpled maître d’, emitting a gust of rotten-meat cologne from his melted head. “Welcome to Club Molasses! Table for two?”

“I have the notebook,” I said, vibrating with ghiaccio furioso, feeling it quiver and fade as it had with Elzy. It was plain me versus maniac him, and I said, “Take it and let us go. That was the deal.”

“Let you go? Oh no-no-no!” he trilled, pumping his arms in time to his words like a crazed sports fan. “Not until I inspect the no-no-notebook!”

“You want it?” I said, kicking it across the parquet dance floor. “Go get it.”

Poor Kevin watched it slide like a hockey puck and then looked at me. The pupils of his eyes through the ski mask holes grew larger and smaller, like two crazy cameras trying to find focus, and then he shrugged and shambled after it. And then everything sped up—me lugging Doug toward the door, Poor Kevin picking up the notebook, me bracing for an explosion and then hearing a soft, gentle
pop.
I turned to him staring at the blank, smoking pages that did not blow up, and then he lifted his horrific head and said as coldly as a frozen knife, “You think I’m stupid?”

“It’s a misunderstanding,” I said, backing toward the door with Doug attached to me like a three-hundred-pound anchor.

“It’s a death sentence!” he squealed, galloping across the floor. I dropped Doug, ducked and moved, and Poor Kevin’s massive fist missed my head by inches. When he turned, I was waiting with a hard left-right combo that stopped him. He shook his head and then went into a fighter’s crouch too, and we squared off on the dance floor. “Hey, this is gonna be fun!” he said as we circled. “Just like the old days when I used to beat the dirt out of that schlub uncle of yours! You Rispolis are all the same, blah-blah-blah, all talk and no . . .” and then he had to stop talking because my fist was in his mouth—once, twice, three times—and he skidded backward. Then he charged forward, and I dropped a shoulder and threw my Willy Williams left hook.

The sound of fist on jawbone cracked across Club Molasses.

Poor Kevin stumbled and reeled to the floor like a train off its tracks.

He slid face-first and hit the bandstand, and I ran for Doug.

“Come on!” I grunted, sitting him up like an enormous toddler, and he was almost to his feet when we both went down. Doug rolled but I was trapped under Poor Kevin, his knee on my back and his big leathery hands finding my neck again, for what I knew would be the last time. His thumbs went to my windpipe and the edges of the world were trimmed in black. Doug lifted up on a shoulder and fell, then tried again, but he was like a newborn turtle with his bruised, closed eyelids.

Dying was not okay, I told myself. There was no resolution or freedom in it. I struggled against it with every muscle and tendon in my body, and when I felt my brain emptying itself of oxygen, I thought of Lou.

No, wait—not Lou—I meant Lou’s dog, Harry.

He blasted out of the darkness like a tiny Italian ball of cold fury and chomped his needle-sharp jaws onto Poor Kevin’s butt cheek, with the freak shrieking and flailing his arms. I had no idea how the crafty little canine got inside Club Molasses—I thought the only way in and out was through the oven elevator or the Capone Door in the office—but realized then that there had to be other doors, yet to be discovered. I rolled onto my back, sucking air, and watched Poor Kevin rip Harry free and throw him softball-style into the backseat of the convertible Ferrari.

Ferrari, I thought, hacking spittle and grabbing Doug by the ankles.

I knew the keys were in the ignition.

I prayed to God there was gasoline in the tank.

I dragged Doug across the parquet floor, my feet stuttering a mile a minute as Poor Kevin sprinted toward us, and then it was all over, done, we were dead, except that a gray hairy sausage dropped from the ceiling. The rat landed on Poor Kevin’s shoulder, snarling and ripping, and he grabbed it and squeezed its guts out. As I shoved Doug into the passenger seat, the masked psycho spun the bloody rat pelt by its worm tail and screeched, “That’s it? That’s all you got? One little mouse!” right before a dozen pissed-off rodents fell on his head. Nunzio’s rats, bred to protect all things Rispoli, were fulfilling their DNA with gusto. Poor Kevin made a noise that was half six-year-old girl, half fingernails on a blackboard. I cranked the engine, and the incredible machine roared to life. Since there was nowhere to go, no way to escape the subterranean space, my simple intention had been to back over the homicidal creep until he stopped moving. But then the headlights popped on and I looked at the wall in front of the Ferrari.

A pattern of bricks formed a large but subtle
C
.

I suddenly realized how someone got the car down here in the first place.

There were Capone Doors, I thought. Why not Capone Garage Doors?

I leaped from the Ferrari and touched the wall—nothing—and then leaned against it—nothing—then threw a desperate shoulder and heard a creak and a rumble, and the wall lifted slowly, revealing a wide, dark tunnel. I was back in the car with inert Doug and shivering Harry, and I paused only for a glance back. Poor Kevin squeezed rats, bit rats, swatted and stomped rats, and then a dozen more of Antonio and Cleopatra’s offspring dove from the ceiling, hissing and clawing at his masked head, his raw fingers, and then another dark mass, and another, until the freak looked like a rat Christmas tree, all of it squirming and ripping, and I couldn’t tell his squealing from theirs.

I had tried to blow him up and then used his head like a speed bag, he had been attacked by a dog, and he was now being nibbled and sliced by a hundred rats, and still he fought on ferociously. I remembered Elzy’s description of her brother—nothing short of a Mack truck would stop him—and leaned heavily on the gas, fishtailing into the tunnel. It twisted and climbed with the cold smell of earth all around me until I heard wheels on concrete, and then the blast of a truck horn as I screeched onto Lower Wacker Drive. My dad’s Lincoln is a fast car but the Ferrari is a fast something else, somewhere between automobile and airplane, and I flew above the pavement. I spun onto Congress and then onto the Eisenhower, and I was gone, going nowhere in particular, just as far away from Poor Kevin as possible. I wept violently on that dark, empty stretch of expressway, expelling leftover fear and fury. I stopped and began again, and then it passed away.